DIY: Easy upcycled knotted baby hats!

So until he is, I’ve decided to make use of our time effectively. A lunch date here, a sewn diaper there… Going to make a plush toy or two in the next couple of days, but first! I made these today:

I first saw these hipster kid-looking hats on Miss j Handmade and I really, really wanted to make some for our boy.

I didn’t have any cute chevron, deer or otherwise trendily printed shirts, but we have lots of graphic tees sitting in the no-good pile (either due to a small hole or a twisted seam, etc). So I set my sails to the seas of Pinterest and found a great tutorial from Dear Lizzy.

You can follow her instructions and use the pattern provided. The hat looks huge in that pattern, but I fit-to-page mine on 8.5″x11″ paper and it seems like it made a good 3 month old sized hat. But what do I know? I haven’t got a kid to compare sizes with yet. You can also follow the instructions I’ve laid out, because I did mine just slightly differently. (Still very easy!)

For the most part I followed the tutorial given on that blog, but I used the whole pattern length (whereas she used the hem of a t-shirt instead of using the last part after the dotted line, I believe).

Line up the pattern on the coolest looking part of the shirt, remembering that the long goofy part at the top will be knotted and the design won’t be much seen there.

Having cut the two pieces at the same time on an inside-out shirt, keep the shirt inside out (right sides facing), pin the two sides and the goofy long top part. Sew the edges with a zig-zag, then do a straight stitch around the perimeter of that to reinforce.

From there, stick the hat opening around your sewing machine’s sleeve-hemming arm. If you’ve never hemmed — pull the storage compartment off yours and plunking the opening over what’s left makes hemming sleeves/cuffs much easier. Zig-zag the rough cut edge all the way around the hat opening to prevent fraying — you don’t need to be a pro, it’ll be hidden once the hat is rolled up — then turn the hat right-side out.

Roll up the hat at the bottom twice and press it (I eyeballed it, and I should have ironed but will do that later). When it looks like a good width, line up your side seams with the rolled up part’s side seams, then stitch those together so the hat isn’t constantly unravelling on the baby’s head. You’ll do this on both the left and right sides of the hat.

Knot the long goofy part, and that’s it!

If you don’t like the rough edge (I didn’t on my dino hat, because the thread didn’t match), pinch the seam into the hat like so, and stitch a straight line across the inside. You’ll have a nice clean seam on the outside with no thread showing.

Rough seam? You can fix that.

Pinched in the seam, stitched new seam inside to create ‘clean seam’ outside.

Another view of the pinched in seam. Hopefully this gets the point across… I didn’t do well taking this picture. Sorry!

Voila! Hats! For a baby!

Hope you try this out and love the results! I’d love to see what you come up with.